Your case rests on a single key document. Fortunately, you were able to produce that document. When you showed it to your lawyer, they agreed that you were going to win the case.
Then you got to court and discovered that you couldn’t actually present that evidence because your lawyer had managed to lose it. They are unsure what happened to it. You trusted them to make multiple copies, as is standard practice, but they hadn’t even done that. They didn’t have the copies, the originals or anything else.
You lost the case. You know you should have won. It was your lawyer’s mishandling of the situation that lost the case for you. Now what?
It may be legal malpractice
It is important for lawyers to take the proper legal steps to put their clients in the best possible situation. Nothing guarantees a win, of course, and you are technically just speculating that you would have won with that document in hand. Either way, though, your lawyer has an obligation to do things in the proper manner and not to sabotage your case — intentionally or accidentally — so that you lose a case you should have won.
Something like this may not be common, but all it takes is one mistake. That error could have a drastic impact not just on your case, but on the rest of your life. If you feel like this is what has happened to you, be sure you are well aware of your legal options. There are steps you can take.